“They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?”

“I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific big-wigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heave bricks into the middle of them.”

“Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.”

“Embryos think with each stage of their development that they have now reached the only condition that really suits them. This, they say, must certainly be their last, inasmuch as its close will be so great a shock that nothing can survive it. Every change is a shock; every shock is a pro tanto death. What we call death is only a shock great enough to destroy our power to recognize a past and a present as resembling one another. ”

“When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence. ”

“Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.”

“Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.”